Page:The Letters of Cicero Shuckburg III.pdf/239

 Pansa has started for his province to-day, as you seemed to expect, begin telling me henceforward in your letters what you are expecting about the return of Brutus, that is to say, about what days. You will be easily able to guess that, if you know where he is. I note what you say to Tiro about Terentia: pray, my dear Atticus, undertake that whole business. You perceive that there is at once a question of duty on my part involved—of which you are cognizant—and, as some think, of my son's pecuniary interest. For myself, it is the former point that affects my feelings much the more strongly: it is more sacred in my eyes and more important, especially as I do not think we can count on the latter as being either sincerely intended or what we can rely upon.

DLII (A XII, 20)

TO ATTICUS (AT ROME)



You don't yet appear to me to be fully aware how indifferent I have been about Antony, and how impossible it is for anything of that sort now to disturb me. I wrote to you about Terentia in my letter of yesterday. You exhort me—saying that other people look for it also—to hide the fact that my grief is as deep as it is. Could I do so more than by spending whole days in literary composition? Though my purpose in doing so is not to hide, but rather to soften and heal my feelings: yet, if I don't do myself any good, I at least do what keeps up appearances. I write the less fully to you because I am waiting your answer to my letter of yesterday. What I most want to hear is about the temple,